Artemis II Is HOME! Here's What They Did.

TL;DR

Artemis II completed a 10-day lunar flyby mission, traveling 500,000 km from Earth and breaking the Apollo 13 distance record by 6,600 km.

Key Points

• 1.Artemis II is NASA's second of four planned moon missions. The ultimate goal is to establish a lunar colony, with the crew spending 10 days testing life support, navigation, and communication systems in high Earth orbit before heading moonward.
• 2.The crew broke the Apollo 13 distance record set in 1970. Traveling nearly half a million kilometers from Earth, they swung behind the moon — 6,600 km farther than any humans before — allowing them to test a radiation shelter and observe the lunar far side.
• 3.Re-entry was considered the mission's most dangerous phase. The spacecraft pierced the atmosphere at 40,000 km/h, with the heat shield enduring plasma temperatures reaching roughly half the heat of the sun, before safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.